Around Prague – Milady Horákové

The street which connects Patočkova and Strossmayer Square, was named after Czech politician Milada Horáková, in 1990.

Milada Horáková was a Czech politician, who was part of underground resistance movement with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. She was caught by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, but later was sent to prison instead.

After the liberation in 1945, Horáková returned to Prague and rejoined the Social Democratic party. She was elected a member of the Constituent National Assembly of Czechoslovakia, but resigned her seat after the Communist coup. Friends urged her to leave Czechoslovakia, but she remained in the country and continued to be politically active. She was later arrested, and executed by the communist party on charges of conspiracy and treason.

Many prominent figures in the West, notably Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt, petitioned for her life, but the sentences were confirmed. She was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950; she was 48 years old.

Horáková’s reputation was not fully rehabilitated until after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.